
By year end of 2006, the number of uninsured Americans increased by 2.1 million which brings the total number of uninsured non-elderly Americans to 46.5 million. With employer based coverage dropping and premium payments rising, many Americans of different income levels are caught in a bind. Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program may help to cover lower income children who lost access to employer based coverage; the same cannot be said with those belonging to middle income families where Medicaid and SCHIP is in short supply. Majority of the increase in uninsured children come from the income levels between 200 percent and 399 percent of the federal poverty level.